Two things, however, had appalled him and his men: the rank stench of the ship, emanating from the decks where the rowers were chained to their sweeps; and the unsuspected fact that such ships were powered by slaves. Connor had been completely unprepared for that. When he had discovered it, he had been forced to consider abandoning his attempt to steal it, knowing that the vessel's oarsmen would be confined there, and aware of what was afoot. The size of the ship, however, the overwhelming bulk of it and the power it offered, had convinced him that he could not simply do nothing merely because he feared the possible reaction of a crew of slaves. Certainly, he reasoned, they might rebel and raise the alarm when they discovered the theft, in which case Connor and his men would be in dire straits; or they might even refuse to row the vessel, which would be scarcely better. Connor, however, had elected to believe they might choose freedom, and so he offered it, overcoming language difficulties by the simple expedient of choking a hulking overseer with his own whip, striking the chains off the leading slaves and setting some of his own men to toil beside them in starting the ship away from the dock. His message of hope spread quickly, and the galley slaves worked harder, without goading, than they had probably ever worked before. By dawn, the bireme was safe in deep, blue water, surrounded by Connor's own galleys and unthreatened by pursuit.
I interrupted him at that point to ask him what he had done with the slaves, and he smiled at me.
"Almost half of them are here aboard, those who were fit enough to want to fight. "
"And what about the others?"
'They're in the north, among our Isles. Some died, but very few. The others are... mending. "
"How long ago did all this occur?"
His smile grew wider. "What was it, three months ago? No, it was four. I sailed directly south on leaving you, and we took the ship a short time after that... perhaps two weeks. My plan was right, you see. No point in putting off what could be done right then and there. "
"And then you sailed home again, all the way north, directly?"
He laughed. "We had to, man! We couldn't stay down here. You've never smelled a stink the like of what we found aboard. Those rowers were chained to their oars, never released for any purpose, so they lived in their own filth. My men were vomiting all the time from the stench of it. You couldn't eat your food and hold it down! We had to clean the whole ship, stem to stern. We beached it, north of here, as soon as we were free of interference, and swilled it out, but the stink was settled deep in the wood and would not be swiftly moved."
I nodded. "It still smells ripe," I said, but Connor waved my comment away disdainfully.
"Ah, it's almost nothing now, and growing fainter all the time. I tell you, at the start, it was unbearable. When we won home, to the Isles, we didn't dare take the thing near any of our people, so we beached it again on a sand bar and then spent two months scraping the hull and scrubbing the wood inside it with lye soap to root out the stink. Even then, it was hard to bear. We floated it again and built slow fires of peat along the decks, in braziers, letting the sweet smell of the smoke hang tight inside the walls for two full weeks, and that made things a little better. After that, we filled the space between the decks with fresh mown hay. Soon we'll fumigate the place again with sweet peat smoke, and that should finish it. Now no man shits or pisses between decks, on pain of flogging.
"But what a ship, eh, Merlyn? What a ship! Nigh on five hundred men I have in her right now. Five hundred men! It's cramped—there's no denying that—but five hundred on one ship!" He stopped, then shook his head. "Mind you, that's a lot of men to drown if she ever sank under us." He stood up and strode across his cabin, and the deck above his head was high enough to permit him to do so without stooping. He thumped the sloping wall. "Little chance of that, though. Solid, this is, and iron hard, though I've not the least idea what kind of wood it is."
"What of the other one?"
"The other one like this? I've no idea, nor have I ever seen it. If it's still in these waters, I'll find it one day."
"And then? What will you do?"
"I'll burn it, or I'll capture it."
"You mean you'll fight it, ship to ship?"
His grin was ferocious. "Why not? All the advantages would lie with me. Their ship is crewed by slaves, mine by free men. We'll out row them, out sail them and out fight them."
I glanced at Donuil, to see how he was taking this, and found him grinning at his brother. "So be it," I said. "Where are you headed now, and how did you happen to come by here?"
Connor shrugged his broad shoulders. "I knew you were in Cambria, but I didn't know where. We rode out last night's storm in a small bay two hours' sailing time from here, and now I'm on my way to join forces with Logan. I'll sweep along the coast here, till I reach the river mouth, then turn south and sail back westward along the northern coast of Cornwall. Logan will sail east, from the end of the Cornish horn, to join me in visiting Ironhair's harbour there, the one where we found this beauty. It's defended by a fort, built into the cliff, but like all forts, it's built facing the land, so it offers us no great threat. That's why we were able to sail out so easily. This time we'll sail in, but of course they'll know us as enemies, even before we attack. They'll know this beauty immediately. Her sister may even be there when we arrive, in which case we'll take her if we can, or destroy her if we must. In either event, I intend to make life unpleasant for the troops along that coast, outside the fort and close to the town." He paused. "You've a look in your eye, Merlyn Britannicus, a look I knew well when you were yellow headed the first time. What have you in your mind?"
I shook my head. "Nothing, really. What's this fort called? Is it Tintagel, by any chance?"
Connor nodded. "Aye, that's the name. You know it?"
"I know of it. Lot of Cornwall's father started building it, and Lot carried on with the work. Is it made of stone?"
"Some of it. Some parts of it. They've had masons working on it for years, but it's nowhere near complete. Mainly it's built of wood—log palisades. Would you like to come with me and see it?"
I answered his grin with my own. "I would dearly love to, but my troops might grow confused, seeing me sail off like that. I think I'd better stay right here, in case fighting breaks out."
"Well, then, let me show you my ship, before I have to go. Logan has less than ten craft with him, in the south, so I've no wish to keep him waiting for my arrival. Come."
I was stunned by the spaciousness of his new craft. From the exterior view it looked enormous, but walking between the multiple decks, its real dimensions became awesomely apparent. It stretched fully eighty paces long, from stem to stern as Connor said, while the width of the main deck was twenty five paces. The hatches to the cargo holds ran in a line along the middle of the craft, giving access to the holds themselves, three full decks beneath. The great double banks of oars were handled from a stepped deck in the very centre of the craft, where the rowers of alternate sweeps worked above and below each other, half the height of a tall man separating them. The signs of recent slavery were still apparent there: iron rings set into the floor and smooth worn channels in the wooden deck showed where the chains that bound the rowers had run. At the rear end of the rowing deck , directly at the foot of the companionway leading up to the steering deck, a massive kettledrum sat mounted on a tripod. This, Connor explained, was the post of the oarmaster, the man who dictated the rhythm of the huge sweeps that propelled the ship. From his position just below the shipmaster on the stern steering deck, the oarmaster could clearly hear the commands passed down to him, and the rhythmic pounding of his drum hammers decreed the pace of the rowers’ efforts.